Computer shutting off?

[Cygnus X1]

Spiv, there is no onboard sound on this, and the only PCI card in it is the sound card.

I'm going to try new sound card drivers, and then I'm going to circuit city, and best buy to look at computers.

As Dane Cook says, "f))) this game!"

I apologize for getting sharp about this, Deneb...I have gone through similar tail-chasing. The Mac users deserve to have a chuckle at our expense.
I've heard to stay away from Gateway, and Dell lately, HP has actually improved, despite prior reputation. All may be BS, as I am about to build another system myself. I'm kind of waiting for Vista to settle in. The only other variable I can see is the USB. Those can get picky about just when you plug a component in, but...a lot of great answers here. Be patient, my friend.

[DrDoug]

Dell 4500? Our daughter has a Dell 4550 (P4-2.533) and she had the same kind of problem, but hers would happen when she would do a series of things in an online game. Just like you said, it was like hitting reboot. No dump, just a kill and restart on its own. I went through that thing over and over, and it finally solved itself when one of the RAM slots started working intermittently. She would boot up, and it would report 920 mb of RAM at post (she has 1 gig in it), then it would report 1024 on another boot, then 768 on another boot.

I pulled the second module and it started working right. So I put another known good module in and had the same problem. So I tried one more good module, same. We got a motherboard on ebay (pretty cheap too), and the problem was solved.

Damn nutty problem, and I can agree with you pulling your hair out. I sure felt like it too.

[Deneb]

Well I was all like, I think I nailed it (I think you could see the light bulb above my head.

I saw in the device manager big question marks by my usb controllers. So I installed the drivers for it, and it was all like happy.

I recorded about 3 minutes on one track, and was like...okay here goes, track two time. It let me record three minutes there! Then! I went to track three. It was all like, yeah baby, record away.

Then...da da daaaaa it clicked off.

I'm stumped. So I punched the tower, you know, because I'm stupid and I think of things like hulk smash. It didn't help anything, but I'm in the same situation.

My girl has a dell dimension something or other. I'm thinking about taking everything from this and dumping it into that to see what happens.

Ugh.

[Spivonious]

Before you go out and buy a whole new computer, try a new motherboard first. If you need help choosing one, let me know.

What chipset are you using? If it's an Intel one, be sure to download the latest chipset drivers for it. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/defa..._nav2_download

[FlyingSkull]

I have found in my experience a PC that will boot ok then completly power down within a few minutes is processor related. My last PC I built from spare parts (spare refurb Intel 2.8 HT processor, brand new ASUS SLI board) did that. I luckily had another processor that I swapped in and it worked fine. Just a note on that, I was watching CPU temp's when it was failing and did not notice anything out of ordinary when it was shutting off. It would run for about ~4-5 minutes each time before doing this.


If it is booting and running fine but restarts without shutting down, I would lean more toward drivers/XP kernel issues. If you are starting an app or process and it happens I would lean toward driver problems.

If it is a Dell mainboard make sure you install drivers from dell.com. Even though it may be a Intel or other manufacturer chipset, you need the Dell driver.
I work in IT for a large company that exclusivly uses Dell PC's. I have seen cases where a Dell modem driver is unstable enough to cause problems like yours.
Best thing to do if you have a Dell board is to go to Dell.com, search for all drivers related to the PC the board is from and sort by date. This includes any onboard hardware, ie. video, modems, NIC, sound etc. Do all of the ones you can. The website is kindof clunky but you can find stuff. If you have the service tag from the old PC you can make it a bit easier but it will take time. I have seen cases where the generic Win XP included drivers are not sufficient and will cause problems.

Hope this helps, sorry if this info was covered previously by other posters.

[Vass]

Did you update your NVidia drivers? Specifically, the N-Force drivers?

I had a very similar problem about a year ago....If you did re-install drivers let me know and I can try to figure out wtf I had to do to fix it...there's something in the NForce suite, unrelated to your video & audio, that was banging me up....basically NVidia installing drivers to control processes they had no business messing with.

Part of the problem was that even if it said I had totally uninstalled them, they were still hanging around...there's a removal utility, I'll see if I can find it if you think that may be what it is.

Vass

[yard dawg]

Get a MAC !!!!!!!!! Every pro studio I know of uses MACS. Also I wouldnt get a computer from Circuit City if it will be a dedicated recording computer. There are better options out there.

Try here

http://www.sweetwater.com/c859--PC_Desktops

they have MACS too.